Ready to Love Again
by Stelena-Beautiful
Summary: It all started with a bachelor auction... A Marissa and Scott two-shot.
1. Chapter 1

_**I don't mean to offend any Minx fans with this story but I wrote it before Marissa came out and want to archive it here. Thanks for understanding. FYI - Daniel Cosgrove is the Scott in this piece.**_

**Ready to Love Again**

-1-

_It really all started up again with the bachelor auction..._

Marissa had overheard JR confidently boasting to Amanda that he was sure Marissa would bid on him; that Marissa wouldn't be able to turn down this chance to be with him again. Marissa had just shaken her auburn-haired head and walked away. There was no way she was bidding on JR. Yes, she was finally ready to stop punishing him for the stuff with Annie but she wasn't going to let him have full access to hurt her again. She knew how JR was; what he did to her. If she had bid on him, he would say and do all the right things again and she'd believe him until the inevitable happened ... Until he hurt her again. She was scared of loving anyone again so she wouldn't even go there.

-2-

So instead she bid on Scott Chandler. Yes, there was some satisfaction in seeing JR's eyes go wide in consternation and shock at the moment Marissa slapped down five big ones for his cousin, but mostly she bid on Scott because she liked him. At one time, he could have maybe been more than just a friend to her but that time had seemingly passed. He had Madison now. He had gotten her pregnant, and they seemed to be bonding amazingly well. Marissa wouldn't dare try to interrupt that because she knew how it felt to be in Madison's situation. To love someone and have them snatched away from you when you least expected it.

-3-

Scott smiled and then leaned over and kissed Marissa's cheek lightly. "To what do I owe the honor or having the prettiest woman in the room bid on me?" He asked after the auction as he moved over to her.

Marissa smiled. "Oh please," she smiled. Then she shrugged. "I just felt inspired I guess."

"Does this have to do with sticking it to JR?" Scott asked, hooking his arm through hers as they moved towards the parking lot.

"No, honestly it doesn't," Marissa said. "There was a moment there when I wanted to hurt him as much as he hurt me but ... No, this date is all about you and me. We haven't hung out for what seems like months and I miss that."

Scott nodded. "Yeah, me too."

-4-

The next night was their date. Scott packed a large picnic basket full of Marissa's favorite foods and though she reminded him that he couldn't afford that anymore, he said he didn't care, that she deserved to be spoiled. He just wanted to make sure she was happy. That's what mattered most to him, he told her.

They took the basket to the boathouse in the park and just sat and talked while they drank a bottle of chilled, thirty-dollar wine. Scott had really thought of everything. Absolutely everything.

Soon enough they were a little more relaxed from the alcohol and their conversations started becoming more personal.

Scott was resting on his left elbow, legs spread out on the planks with a glass flute in one hand, while she sat on the bench above him, a glass in her hand as well.

"How are you?" Scott asked, looking up at her with kind brown eyes. She knew how everyone said he was a jerk, a deceptive person who could lie a blue streak, a wolf in sheep's clothing, but she didn't feel that way. She never had. The way he looked at her now ... she knew he really cared.

Marissa nodded. "I'm fine," she answered. She could be truthful with him but she didn't think she was ready for that, not even if she felt she could tell Scott anything.

"Be honest," he said and reached out and thumbed her arm softly.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm ... I'm ..." Tears suddenly gathered in her amber eyes, wetting her eyelashes and finally spilling over.

Scott was up like a flash in the next moment and pulling her next to his strong chest and holding her the way no one held her anymore; like he cherished her.

-5-

She cried for a long time despite feeling very foolish doing so. She finally stopped and rested her head on his shoulder. "Sorry," she murmured.

He rested his head atop of hers. "You never have to be sorry around me, Marissa," he murmured. "Just be ... you."

Marissa smiled weakly. "Okay I was honest with you about how miserable I've been lately ... Now you be honest ..."

"About what?"

"How are you doing? How do you feel about being a father?"

Scott cringed noticeably but Marissa didn't call him on it. Instead she let him talk the way he had let her. "Well I'm okay, actually. Maybe a bit in over my head again. Liking someone too much who isn't mine to have."

"You mean Madison?"

Scott looked at her long and hard and she shivered. He finally slowly nodded. "Uh, yeah ..."

"Scott, be honest here," Marissa said even though she was afraid to hear whatever he had to say. Afraid to hope, afraid to believe...

Scott took a deep breath. "Okay you were honest with me. I can attempt to return the favor for once," he chuckled softly. "Alright I care about Madison. We've kissed a few times. I feel good when I'm with her. But I'm not the one she really wants - nor is she the only I really want."

"You mean Annie ..."

Scott looked at Marissa with warm brown eyes again and lightly ran a finger down her pale cheek. "It would make it easier if it were Annie. If I could say she was the love of my life but she never was, she never has been..."

Marissa's heart took to hammering. "Who - I mean, if it's not Annie or Madison ... Do I know her?"

"Of course you do," Scott said. "You know her well. Maybe you could know her a little better though, learn to appreciate what an amazing woman she is."

"Stop talking in riddles."

"Marissa, that woman ... She's you."

-6-

Marissa immediately stiffened in his arms and he sighed. "I knew I shouldn't have said anything."

"I asked you to be honest..." Marissa murmured.

"Yeah you did," Scott said. "Now you gotta deal with the consequences."

"But Scott, see? You don't want me. You want to punish JR or you want to bury what you feel for Annie or Madison or whomever else in someone who's safe and predictable. But I don't want to be anyone's safe choice again, Scott. Or their last choice. I refuse to be."

-7-

She was up like a shot this time and running out of the boathouse. Scott watched her go, unable to decide if he could stop her. He sensed she wanted to believe that he cared; that he loved her, but she was afraid. His cousin had burned her so badly; she couldn't trust Scott not to break her heart too. Scott knew he would cherish Marissa though in a way JR never quite had. He realized JR fell for Marissa because she seemed like a safe choice; because she was the kind of woman JR thought could save him from that dark place Chandler boys went. But Scott knew he was past that point. That he was stronger now and he loved Marissa for Marissa, not what she could do for him.

He just had to find a way to make her see that...

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2/2**

-1-

"We can just be friends," he said as he appeared on her doorstep the next afternoon.

She couldn't help but smile a little. "Do friends always bring friends flowers?" She asked, pointing to the little bouquet of daisies in his hand.

Scott smiled and shook his head. "No, I guess they don't," he said and dumped the daisies in Opal's garden. He shrugged. "That's taken care of."

She laughed, unable to help herself, and slowly pushed past him and picked up the daisies. As she was coming back through the door, she impulsively pecked him on the cheek. "Thanks... For the daisies. And your friendship."

- 2 -

He started calling her every night just to talk about "friend stuff" as he called it. She enjoyed their chatter and she was glad he never pressed for more than she could give. But she had to admit he was right when he said one night, "I'm not JR, Marissa, okay? Just remember that." He was correct. He wasn't JR. He wasn't half as arrogant or half as in love with his own grief. He seemed to be the only person in all of Pine Valley who didn't expect her to be just like her sainted twin sister. Maybe because he hadn't met Babe.

Or maybe because he really cared.

- 3 -

Another year was drawing to a close. 2011 was almost over and Marissa hoped the following year would go so much better. She started to make her resolutions though before Christmas decorations had even gone up at the holiday-happy Martin house. She wrote them out on a little pink piece of paper. Number one was "Try to be a better mother to AJ no matter how much JR annoys me" and number two was "Don't fall in love with Scott Chandler". Even if she already knew she had.

-4-

He kept coming around and she kept trying to put him off but he was determined; persistent as hell really to make her his. She wanted to believe it was because Madison had turned out to be Ryan's baby mama and not his. Marissa thought she was probably just a challenge Scott felt he needed to conquer...

But sometimes though she didn't believe Scott thought of her that way at all - as a challenge to a win; but rather a prize, to love.

- 5 -

Christmas Eve rolled around soon enough. Scott showed up with a present he had scrimped for with his meager earnings from the hospital. It was a pair of gorgeous turquoise earrings and he'd also managed to procure a dried blue salvia (it was a symbol that meant he was thinking of her, he briefly explained) which he told her spent the past two months pressing in between the pages of a book called "The Law for Idiots".

She'd laughed. "You're studying legalese?" He'd nodded.

"Yeah I have to find a way to impress you somehow," he said. He pointed upwards then to where she was standing under the mistletoe. "Permission to approach the witness?"

She laughed for a moment and then nodded. Everyone had mysteriously disappeared when Scott had arrived and now it was just the two of them, alone. She felt flutters in her stomach that she hadn't felt in so long. And then Scott was kissing her and she was stretching up on her tiptoes to really give into the kiss. She was sure then that she had never loved any feeling in the world more than Scott's lips brushing over hers.

- 6 -

"I'm still afraid," she admitted to Krystal a few weeks later. Christmas and New Year's Eve had come and gone and she and Scott were edging closer and closer to the inevitable. Would they make it? Marissa was scared to believe anything could work out at this point even if she wanted it to so desperately.

Krystal reached out and touched her daughter's porcelain cheek lightly. "You know I am no fan of the Chandler family but something tells me, Scott means it when he says you're it for him. So, Marissa, stop being afraid of being hurt again and just embrace that gorgeous man and tell him you feel the same way he does. Trust that he won't hurt you. He's spent the last year trying to be everything you need. Now let him be."

- 7 -

They had had sex before, of course; one time when their feelings were particularly raw over JR and Annie's continual betrayals, but this time it wasn't a desperate, pathetic, or grief-filled act. It was an act born of pure love. As Marissa lay in his arms, she knew somehow she'd finally come home. She had spent so much time feeling incomplete and unworthy in every way but with Scott, she could just be herself and she knew he loved her for it.

"Penny for your thoughts," Scott said as he tucked his bare arm around her waist and rolled over to face her. "That's all I can afford but you can have it, Marissa. I'd give you everything I have."

Marissa smiled. "What about your heart?"

Scott nodded. "You already have that."

A tear dripped down her face. "I'm not Babe. Everyone wanted me to be my twin when I came here. They still do ..."

"I don't need you to be Babe," he said, stroking her cheek. "I need you to be you. The amazing woman you are. I need you to be the woman in my life in every way. Because I love you."

Marissa nodded and rested her head against his chest. "I love you too, Scott," she murmured. "I'm scared but I'm not going to let it hold me back anymore. I want to move forward - with you."

Scott grinned and kissed her forehead. "So we're really going for this huh?"

"I'm ready if you are," Marissa said softly.

"Are you kidding, Marissa?" Scott said. "I've been ready all along. I was just waiting for you to be."

"Well I am now," she said as his lips found hers. "I'm definitely ready for our life to begin. Together."

FINIS


End file.
